It has long been assumed that playing at home gives a team an advantage - but
the boost may drive up standards for years afterwards.

Britain can expect a medal boost this Olympic year, according to scientists, as the benefits of a home advantage for athletes push Team GB to heights of excellence absent since the original London Games in 1908.

In a paper in the Journal of Sport Science entitled Modelling home advantage in the Summer Olympic Games, Drs Balmer, Nevill, and Williams of the Universities of Liverpool John Moores and Wolverhampton explored what effect hosting the Olympic Games had on countries' standings in the competition, with factors including increased investment in sport, the effect of a large number of spectators, and (unconsciously) biased officiating.

Home nations were shown to win approximately three times more medals in home Olympics, they reported, and approximately two times more in Olympic Games either side of their home Olympics.

Britain's fourth place medal table standing and 47 medals at Beijing in 2008 compared to just 28 in Sydney in 2000 fit this theory, as the prospect of a future home Olympics and increased funding for sport after the announcement of London's successful bid in 2005 spurred on a new generation of British champions.

In sports with subjective decision making, where points are allocated by a referee or judge, such as boxing, gymnastics, and some team sports, the report found that a home advantage is likely to be particularly pertinent. Athletics and weightlifting competitors were not expected to benefit from home advantage in the same way due to more objective criteria for success.

Nations who have recently dominated at the Olympics and which have subsequently hosted the Games reaped the greatest benefit, according to the report's authors, who described: "Significantly greater home advantage in event groups that are either subjectively judged (gymnastics, boxing) or rely on subjective decisions (team games). Home advantage for these three groups was significantly greater than that of the two objectively judged groups (athletics weightlifting) once we had controlled for the proportion of competitors/teams.

"The year of the Olympic Games is more significant for spectator attendance, as numbers simply increase over time. For Olympic competition, stronger nations’ dominance in a given event would severely reduce weaker host nations’ opportunities for home advantage."

"Our findings suggest that crowd noise has a greater influence upon officials’ decisions than players’ performances," they added, as "Events with greater officiating input enjoyed significantly greater home advantage."

Track and field athletes such as Jessica Ennis are on their own, however, as the study found "little or no home advantage was expected for sports for which officiating is less overt or predominantly an objective process (track and field, weightlifting)."